State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corporation’s (HPCL) company-wide EBITDA improvement programme, Project Samridhi aided the oil marketing company (OMC) in increasing earnings by $0.54 per barrel across its entire marketing volume, or roughly ₹1,691 crore.
The OMC with the third largest market share in the country, operating more than 25,100 retail outlets (ROs), recorded an over 13 per cent Y-o-Y growth in sales (including exports) to 51.45 million tonnes (mt) in FY26.
In an interaction with businessline, HPCL CFO K Vinod said that Project Samriddhi is a structured, corporation-wide EBITDA improvement programme designed to strengthen the refiner’s profitability and long-term competitiveness while safeguarding operational performance, product quality and safety.
“In FY26, Samriddhi not only met its target but also exceeded it, with total accruals of the order of ₹1,691 crore, a meaningful part of which is permanent in nature and now built into the Corporation’s cost base,” he said.
HPCL had set a target of improving EBITDA by $0.50 per barrel across its sales volume for the last financial year.
Launched in May 2025 to counter sustained cost and margin pressures faced by the refining and marketing business, Project Samridhi was conceived to move beyond isolated, one-time cost-saving measures and establish a permanent, governance-led framework for identifying and capturing value across the organisation.
Three pillars
The programme focuses on three key pillars — margin improvement, cost reduction and structural process transformation.
By driving cost leadership, enhancing operational efficiencies and embedding a culture of continuous improvement, the programme aims to deliver sustainable value creation rather than short-term savings, Vinod noted.
The total EBITDA improvement comprised ₹ 744 crore in recurring benefits and ₹ 947 crore in one-time benefits. In refinery operations, the programme delivered savings of ₹ 428 per tonne of crude throughput across 26.04 mt processed, equivalent to $0.66 per barrel.
In the marketing business, savings of ₹ 119 per tonne of sales volume across 48.53 mt sold translated into an impact of $0.18 per barrel.
Besides, the cost-take-out initiatives contributed ₹288 crore, while the margin improvements initiatives delivered ₹1,403 crore. Contribution from margin improvement items was majorly delivered through a combination of various initiatives such as crude value maximisation, refinery efficiency improvements, supply optimisation, logistics efficiencies, and strategic commercial interventions.
“Major learnings that have emerged are that disciplined execution on a carefully prioritised set of high-impact initiatives yields far more value than spreading effort thinly across a large number of smaller actions,” he emphasised.
The largest pool of value lies in margin-related levers across refining, supply and marketing, rather than in cost reduction alone. Also, that company-wide participation makes a material difference, with virtually every strategic business unit contributing, he added.
“In an industry where profitability is often shaped by factors beyond a company’s control, right from geopolitical developments and crude oil price fluctuations to refining spreads and logistics costs, operational excellence has become a critical differentiator, Vinod stressed.
Against this backdrop, Project Samridhi is emerging as a significant example of how HPCL can create value through internal transformation. The project is built around the philosophy of structural cost takeout and efficiency improvement, which involves the strategic reduction of fixed costs deeply embedded within operations, independent of business volumes, he added.